Two people's inner forearms show matching black line butterfly tattoos with green centres and script lettering beneath each wing, one reading Mother and the other Daughter.

Matching butterfly wrist tattoos with script words

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two matching butterfly tattoos sit side by side on the inner forearms, each with ornate black swirled wings and a teal green teardrop shape at the centre of the wing. Script lettering in black ink runs below each butterfly, with a small dotted trail beneath the words, and the second word appears to read Daughter. The linework is smooth and bold, the colour is limited to the green accent, and the two designs are framed closely together against plain skin.

Lettering Forearm Butterfly Script Mother Swirl Wing Matching Gem

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the kettle, because this is the part about the butterflies and I'll not tell it twice. Mags Hollin had the narrowboat Thimble and a daughter called Ivy who could not sit still for longer than a lock took to fill. When the mother's knees gave out at the Wendle lift, the girl took the tiller and nobody argued, because the river has a way of deciding things for you.

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They ran coal and then gravel and then whatever paid. On a wet March morning they tied up under a willow, and Ivy found a dead butterfly on the towpath, its wings still whole and streaked with a green like wet glass. She carried it back in a jam jar. Her mother looked at it a long while and said the wings were the only part of a thing that ever really went anywhere, then made the girl set it on the stove shelf so they could both see it every morning.

Years on, the Thimble was sold to a man who painted it blue. Ivy kept the jar. When Mags died in the hard winter, Ivy sat on the cabin step with a pen and wrote her mother's name the way the old woman had signed the lock books, looping and quick, and then she wrote her own name beside it, and the two words ran together like water over a sill.

So that's the tale. Go on, drink your tea before it's cold. And if you're ever passing the Wendle lift after dark, look under the willow. Some nights the lamplight catches that green, and you'll swear a wing is moving.